Music

08/20/2013

My son is going into kindergarten this year. He has been in preschool for two years where he has learned quite a lot about the alphabet and is now starting to string letters together to form words. We can sit and read together for about 10 minutes at a clip. He gets very happy when he figures out that certain letters in a row spell certain words.

But then the ten minutes are up and he gets bored.

I am always looking for new books to help keep his attention while teaching him how to read at the same time. And to be honest, there are only so many books about Skylanders I can take, myself.

Thankfully, I was introduced to a new series call The Hip Hop Kids which incorporates many different skills like rhyming, alphabet knowledge, counting and shape & color recognition. I was given the first book in the series Rhyming Words with Milo the MC to review with my son.

Guess who loved it... yep, we both did.

Growing up, I had my fair share of Pumas with fat laces and must have watched Breakin' and Breakin' 2 Electric Boogaloo about a million times each. This little book brought me back to those days when we would go outside with our oversized "boom boxes" and act like we knew how to bust out a coffee grinder or head spin on some cardboard in the side yard. Of COURSE we didn't know what the heck we were doing, but it didn't matter. It was fun ...and so was reading this book with my son.

This first book introduces us to Milo the MC who raps his way through the book to teach readers about rhyming words. He also introduces the rest of the Hip Hop Kids consisting of Daisy the DJ, Greg the Graffiti Artist and Brenda the Breaker. Each subsequent book in the series will feature each character and a different learning skill. My son is looking forward to reading them all!

The writers of the series and founders of The Hip Hop Kids Chris Bivona and Gustavo Angel want YOU to experience the fun, too! They have offered me 3 copies of Rhyming Words with Milo the MC to giveaway here on my blog. All you have to do is enter using the Rafflecopter form below. 3 winners will be chosen when the contest ends on 8/28/13.

10/03/2012

October is Bullying Prevention Month. Coincidentally, my friends at Little Punk People recently made a promotional video for their awesome company, but the underlying theme is about bullying. Check it out.

Little Punk People is made up of husband and wife Justin & Daniela Fullam. They have this really great son Elliott who is featured in the video. Daniela and Justin are both tremendous artists with a knack for making even the most macabre subjects seem less frightening - more "normal".

I love this video for a lot of different reasons. Not only does it have a good message, it utilizes Little Punk People's style and uses characters and visuals I can relate to. I personally like things that are out of the ordinary. Things that are just slightly off kilter from the every day. This video could be a dream I once had. It's so similar to my thoughts.

I also have always been a firm believer that outside appearances mean close to nothing. Nothing. I know nothing of fashion. I couldn't tell you if a pair of jeans were Lees or Lucky Brands. I buy clothes stictly because I have to and only wear things that make ME happy. Sometimes, I'm sure I get funny looks because I don't necessarily match...or my blue nail polish is cracked up...or my hair might not be styled just right. But ya know what? It doesn't bother me. I come home to my family who loves me for who I am.

This video is a testament to loving families everywhere- no matter what type of family you have. The real world can be frightening when people treat you unkindly. But if there is a place to come home to with loving parents who know you, it can't be bad all the time. Your family can give you power to overcome any bully out there.

The whole point is, love one another. There will be people out there that will try to do your children harm for no reason at all. It's heartbreaking. While we can all work on trying to fix that, we need to have a respite for our kids in the meantime. Support your children. Give them solace when their worlds turn upside down.

To remind you of this, Little Punk People has given me a couple of their fansatical shirts to give away. The two shirts they sent over are of the Boo Crew - which is a depiction of Elliott and his friends. Please enter to win, but also check out Little Punk People online. Their artwork is truly amazing and beautiful. Some is for kids, some is for adults, but it's all for fun.

03/16/2012

Going to my grandma's house was always a big ordeal to my sister and me when we were growing up. She didn't live close by. It would take up an entire day that could have been better spent wearing our play clothes, getting dirty and smiling. We had to be proper at Grandma's. We had to be ladies. We ate cream of pumpkin soup and roasted lamb with mint jelly. We used the correct fork and didn't put our elbows on the table. We did NOT ask for seconds during dessert. We did NOT ask to be excused until everyone was finished eating.

We wore our Sunday best to Grandma's because we thought she expected it. We treated those visits as pure torture. Don't get me wrong, looking back at those days I can see our error. But we were kids...we didn't want to sit in the parlor drinking tea. We wanted to be outside exploring the possibility of fairy houses and mud pie eating contests.

The one thing that kept the visits bearable was a beautiful baby grand piano that my grandfather bought as a gift to Grandma before my dad was born. We would sit there on the bench pretending to know what we were doing. I'd hit two low keys back and forth imagining Cinderella running down the castle steps as the clock struck midnight. We'd look through the piano books and find 'On Top of Spaghetti' and sing at the top of our lungs. We'd open the piano bench and find tuning forks and pitch pipes and more books with foreign musical languages in them.

Once we found a book that had the song 'Yesterday' by the Beatles in it. Immediately, we were drawn to it; wondering why our proper grandma had a book with a song by a rock band in it. It was mesmerizing.

When my sister and I became adults, my grandmother aged along with us. My grandfather had passed away long before and she had lived alone for most of my life. But as time went on, it was becoming apparent that moving in with my parents would be a good idea. We all wondered how it would be, considering we always were so proper during visits with Grandma. She would see how we (gasp!) really live.

It was undoubtedly uncomfortable for a little while. Not just for us, but for my grandma, too. She was so used to having such privacy at all times. At my parents' house, she was constantly in the company of another person. At the time, my sister's first child was toddling around doing normal kid stuff. We tried to get her to understand that Grandma was her great grandma, but that quickly translated to my niece calling her Big Grandma. When Grandma seemed OK with it, that was the first time I realized how wrong I was about her my whole life. She started watching Spongebob Squarepants with my niece and nephew. She said "yeah" instead of "yes". She wore pants.

She had always been an enigma to me up until she lived with my parents. I was always afraid to be myself around her. I honestly don't know why. When I would visit her at my parent's house, we had the most wonderful talks about marriage and God and the world... she loved me so much more than I ever understood as a child. We just didn't know how to communicate it well when we were both younger. As we both moved on to different parts of our lives, she became more like me and I became more like her. She let go of a lot of mannerisms that she held onto, and I snatched them up to keep for myself. Yin and yang, I suppose.

My grandma passed away 5 years ago and I miss her every day. The things she taught me have stuck. When my kids slop around their dinner plates with their napkins on the floor, I think of Big Grandma. I explain to the kids how to properly cut their steak and where to put the knife when they're done.

And I play her piano that now sits in my front room. She gave it to me at one of my biggest turning points in life. My husband had just asked me to marry him, and we had bought a house - far away from my family. I was scared and nervous, even though I didn't mention it. That piano soothed me then, as it does now. I'm not a piano player. I took lessons as a child, but never became good at it. I just like to sit there and play the three songs I know...re-thinking all the time I spent at Grandma's house. Wishing it all back again.